If you go down to the woods today…

If you’ve ever lived in the country then you’ve probably never been far from a haunted wood/church/area of some sort. Living in Truro was no exception. Baldhu is a church a little outside of Truro, Cornwall. It was apparently closed down for facing the wrong way on the lay lines and has become a site of devil worship, apparently. This has inevitably led to it becoming a bit of an attraction for the local looking to scare himself shitless when drunk or high.

Myself and a few friends had been out to this church in the middle of nowhere a few times before, mainly just arsing around at night trying to scare each other and on another notable occasion when we had all bought BB guns and decided to play army in the woods. I was about 26 at that time.

One summer night about 10 of us decided to go to Baldhu to play hide and seek so we all piled into 2 cars and headed over to the middle of nowhere. We all pottered around for a while just generally arsing about and having a laugh. Behind the Church, (which is boarded up) is a small wood. This is freaky as persons unknown have decided to hang dolls heads from the trees, which if you aren’t expecting it can really scare the living shit out of you at 1 in the morning.

Pat and John [see previous stories] headed out into the woods to do God-knows-what and the rest of us just hung about. It was at this point that Will noticed some headlights coming down the track and for some unknown reason decided to shout “Quick, hide!!!” and everyone did.

Being that we were in a graveyard most of us hid behind gravestones, with a few opting for the more respectable tree to camouflage themselves.

The night was a moonlight misty one and being that we were in the middle of the countryside it was also rather dark. A short while later two cars parked at the entrance. [Just a quick note. We had parked our cars out of the way as the police were always getting calls here and we didn't want them to find us, so the new arrivals couldn't see our transport.] About 8 or 9 kids got out of the vehicle and it soon became evident that most of them were high as kites as they were all giggling. One of them also said “We are all so fucking high” which was another clue.

They were also all boy racers. Whom I hate. Head boy racer said that he was gonna go into the graveyard alone and I think a couple of the girls probably wet their panties at how fucking cool and hard he was.

Time to start fucking with them.

Myself and Will were quite close to the front behind two gravestones and with the moon being behind us meant that we were almost invisible to the boy racers. I started to moan very lightly, like a zombie and kept this up for about 10 seconds.

Head Boy Racer: What the fuck was that?

Boy racer 1: What? I didn’t hear anything.

HBR: Fuck it, I must just be high.

HBR continued slowly into the graveyard. So I made the noise again, only slightly louder.

BR1: Fuck! I heard that. What the fuck?

Will then started to make the sound of a crying baby which he does remarkably well.

HBR: What’s going on?

The other boy racers were complelty silent and all looked petrified.

It was at this point that Pat and John for some unknown reason decided to start hitting trees with sticks and laughing manically. The woods are about 20 metres form the graveyard and all that could be heard was echoing bangs and slightly distant psychotic laughing.

HBR had, had enough, “Fuck it, I’ve got my knife I’m going in” I think he was almost in tears.

Will obviously thought this had gone far enough and decided to let HBR know that it had all been a joke.

Imagine this scene:

You are at a notorious graveyard stoned out of your tree. It’s around midnight, with the moon high in the sky and a mist covering the gravestones. You have heard strange, unexplained noises coming from the graves and the woods beyond. And then from behind one of the gravestones emerges a 6ft3″ man mountain, back lit by the full moon, his arms outstretched, moving slowly who then says in a very slow deep voice “We only want to play hide and seek!” and then a slight pause and then “Join us”.

All the boy racers start screaming and crying and all run for their cars. HBR stands there for about a second before turning and fleeing. His mates being the great friends they are are already moving by the time he gets to the car so he has to dive onto the roof of the car and in through the sun roof. The cars tear off down the track.

The last image I have of them is of a car speeding away with what I can only make out as a pair of legs sticking out of the roof.

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Will states that he never meant to frighten the boy racers. After hearing HBR comment about the knife he thought that he should calm the situation down so had got up and with his arms open in a sign of welcome had asked them to come and join us in playing hide and seek. He had said it slowly so that they would understand him and come across as being friendly.

I still expect to be drinking back in Cornwall one day and hear a story of how so and so went out to Baldhu and almost got eaten by zombies.